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| The Rest Is Noise | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: FSG
Category: EBooks
List Price: $14.95 (35.19 RON)
Buy New: $9.99 (23.52 RON)
You Save: $4.96 (11.68 RON) (33%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 688
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Dewey Decimal Number: 780.904
ASIN: B000UZQIDI
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 All the rest is noise January 7, 2009
I love Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, even Mahler. But anything beyond that, well, to me it has been just noise. However, Alex Ross's book has helped me to listen in a different way. It takes a long time to work through this book because when Ross talks about this or that composer, this or that piece, I have to stop and find the music (usually at my public library) and listen several times to get what Ross is saying, and then I can listen with more insight (insound?). The historical background is fascinating. The political control in music (e.g., Stalin's effect on Russian composers)is an important part of this book. The subtitle highlights Ross's emphasis on how music tells us something about history. I now understand better the physics of sound and the physical effect that music has on the listener. Ross has a list of recommended recordings which I turn to from time to time. I still do not get Messiaen! This books points the reader in many new directions, opens the reader to other options. It's a great read!
Lo demas es musica January 7, 2009
Alex Ross ha escrito un libro informativo y ameno.
Para los aficionados a la musica, en especial la del siglo XX, es un libro perfecto, que recorre la historia y las claves mas importantes de esta expresion contemporanea.
Ademas, el autor tiene una pagina en internet donde se puede expandir esta agradable experiencia.
 Not what I was expecting December 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was expecting a book that would explain more about 20th century [classical] *music*, but instead this book is mainly biography mixed with a bit of history. If you don't already have a strong background in music theory you will be lost; even if you have a strong background in pre-20th century music you will not learn much about 20th century music here. The book was a big disappointment in that respect.
The snippet from the Amazon.com review sums it up: "The second movement, by contrast, is a hallucinatory Scherzo...[t]he movement ends in a fearsome sequence of four-note figures, which are made up of fourths separated by a tritone...." If you don't know what "Scherzo", "fourths", or "tritones" are, this book will not explain them to you.
A tough mountain to climb November 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm learning a lot about 20th-century music from The Rest is Noise, but it's a tough read. The book is clearly well researched, however, in an effort to cite sources, the author disrupts the narrative flow. Consider the following sentence:
"Strauss sketched a choral work based on Goethe's text, and, as Jackson discovered, some of that material went into Metamorphosen."
"Jackson" here is Timothy Jackson, a researcher mentioned in an earlier paragraph. Inline citations like this are peppered throughout the book, making it very difficult to focus on the story at hand. I think it would have been better if these citations were in the form of endnotes.
The book takes a detached, scholarly tone throughout. Nonetheless, it is a very informative and thorough review of 20th century classical music, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
A review of 20th Century music for the tutored and untutored November 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book immensely edifying. I have no musical training but have an eclectic interest in music. This book is written in a very readable manner without reducing its scholarly value. I found in it some things I did know and much with which I was unfamiliar. It has led me to listen to music of some 20th century composers with whom I was less familiar or not at all familiar. I would highly recommend this work for all persons, scholared or unscholared, who have an interest in the history, present, and future of the classical music genre.
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